


been wishing for you (trying to do what lovers do)

by lesbianjeongyeon



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: College AU, F/F, Soulmate AU, comp het, just a little bit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2017-09-07
Packaged: 2018-12-24 21:39:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12021546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbianjeongyeon/pseuds/lesbianjeongyeon
Summary: are we too grown for games? are we too grown to play around?young enough to chase, but old enough to know betterare we too grown for changin', are we too grown to mess around?oh and i can't wait forever baby, both of us should know better---she does not have time for soulmates.she does not have time for kara wanting to talk about said soulmate.so she’d rather ignore both at the moment.





	been wishing for you (trying to do what lovers do)

**Author's Note:**

> wish i could say i edited this more than i did but i did....not, its 11pm and i have to be up in 5 hours so, i barely did but! yeah, another soulmate au, just me being a slut for those. 
> 
> remember to hit me up @ sawyerdnvers on tumblr

Alex Danvers would be lying if she said she was always content with not having a soulmate. In a small town like Midvale, where there’s only one elementary school, one middle school, one high school, two grocery stores, a street down the beach full of family businesses and tourist traps, it’s needless to say, gossip is the only thing worth talking about in the town. 

Finding your soulmate is like finding a needle in a haystack, seven billion people in the world and you’re supposed to find that one person meant for you. Those are pretty shitty odds, but somehow everyone who has ever lived in Midvale had found their soulmate or at least it seemed that way.

And as a kid it had been this exciting concept, her parents were soulmates. Two perfect human beings who were meant for each other in every way. And maybe they weren’t perfect people on their own, and maybe her father was quick to impulse and maybe her mother did come down to hard on her, but it was fine because they balanced each other out, and Alex loved that. 

Except when she was fifteen and her world came crashing down because suddenly she had an alien intruder in her house attempting to become part of the family, a sister. And suddenly her father dies in a plane crash and she watches her mother wither away because her soulmates gone and they say (whoever they are) that you can never truly recover from that. She asks her mother every day for a year if she misses seeing the color green. 

She always says she does, because it wasn’t just any green, it was the color of the jewel nestled in her wedding band, the color of the ugliest shirt she had ever seen, the one Jeremiah wore on their first date. 

And though Alex tries to move on from this traumatic event, to believe in the hope that a soulmate exists out there, it seems like an almost dangerous adventure she’d rather not embark on. Instead, she buries herself within being Kara’s sister and being side by side with her best friend, Vicky, it only lasts for so long before it’s not that simple, because suddenly Vicky’s got a soulmate and Vicky doesn’t want to be around Alex anymore because.

They’re not children and she has to start thinking about the future, because seeing red for the first time, being able to see the cherry red coloring of their school sign, of the bright fake red coloring of the flowers that sit inside her locker from said soulmate, are more important than hanging out all the time. Then their friendship.

So life moves on and so does she. Eventually.

So in an attempt to better her life, Alex becomes content with not seeing yellow (or at least that’s the color she’s been told), she's content with not seeing the bright hues of sunflowers, of certain cars, and signs. She’s content with the bright blues and reds and greens, and all the other colors that exist because even though she can’t see yellow, and that means she has a soulmate, she’s not sure she’s ever going to find them. 

At first, Alex attempts this by burying herself in books and college, and then booze and drugs, and eventually in Graduate school and in Kara. But she gets there. She eventually makes herself feel like she can move on without seeing yellow, as long as her life is surrounded by red and blue. Sometimes even green. 

She’s content with family.

She’s happy. Or not. At least she’s content.

Until she starts seeing yellow that is. 

(Until she meets Maggie Sawyer.)

\----

She’s back in National City, she’s doing the impossible, she’s in the middle of exam, she’s got a Kryptonian sister who’s just started her Junior year in her undergraduate program and is trying to do a journalism internship while trying still keep her alien side a secret. She’s got herself in the middle of a massive graduate medical program that not only is above her league and age, but might be the death of her.

She does not have time for soulmates.

She does not have time for Kara wanting to talk about said soulmate.

So she’d rather ignore both at the moment. 

“What do you mean you don’t know who your soulmate is!?” Kara tries to keep her voice calm. Alex can tell but it comes out more of a squeak and a yellow, and suddenly she’s dragging her sister into her lab because she can’t handle having this conversation with so many people around. 

With colleagues around, students she tutors around. Anyone around.

“I mean, that recently, there’s been a lot going on. Mom has been on top of me because you’re not calling enough, I’ve got to facilitate that class for Professor Deerhart, a million other things. I didn’t even notice until this morning when I was at Noonan’s and I realized I could see the color of the aprons they’re made to wear.” Alex rambles but it’s only because she’s overwhelmed.

She notes mentally this is not something she needed to deal with only shortly after complaining to Winn that she hadn’t been on a date in two years.

Kara gives her a sympathetic smile anyways. 

“Yeah, those are really ugly, I’m sorry those are the first things you realized. But that means it could be anyone!” 

“Yeah, it could be and because we’re not going to make a big deal out of this, and because 2.7 million people live and work in National City, we’re not going to go searching either.” Alex hisses

And her words hold more severity than she means to but apparently it doesn’t bother Kara and it only makes her roll her eyes, and just throws up her hands, almost room but to Alex’s disdain, she turns right back around pointing a finger at her.    
“But it could be someone on campus or -”   
“Kara no.” 

“Or it could be -”  
  
“Kara!” Alex interrupts her again only this time it’s accompanied with a glare and Kara finally stops bouncing on her feet, and settles back with her hands up in a surrender like position. 

“Fine. But I bet your soulmates out there looking for you right now. I wonder what color they got to see.” 

Alex runs her fingers through her hair because even though she doesn’t want to admit it, she thinks the same thing. She did a thesis paper on this last year, and there was a theory about how the color you see correlates with your favorite color, others say it has to do with personality. In the end most of her response was inconclusive and didn’t have enough data.

So it really comes down to chance. It really came down to fate.

“It doesn’t matter because it’s not happening. So let me get back to work and handle this later. We’re still on for game night tonight then?” 

“Um, duh! Of course!”

“Alright.”

Alex chuckles as Kara leaves because even she knows that Kara’s keeping her excitement in. Kryptonians don’t have soulmates, they see all color, they aren’t missing any. So this is something that Kara gets to live vicariously through her, and Alex is all but shutting her down. 

Alex should feel guilty, on some level, but she doesn’t. 

She shares practically everything with Kara, and she barely wants this for herself, so maybe this can be the one thing she can suffer through without Kara getting involved.

The quicker she moved on from this, the better.

\----

Unfortunately for Alex, that’s not exactly the easiest thing to do.

It turns out after nearly twenty-six years of not seeing the color yellow, there’s a whole fucking lot of it, and Alex is now not only fascinated by it, but she’s suddenly fixated with the color. She’s noticed every way that the color brightens the oranges, how it tints in the road signs, how it can be beautiful, and it can make for some of the ugliest cars. 

She wishes for the love of all things in space, that she could just ignore it. But she can’t.

And suddenly without her notice, she’s looking at everyone she’s passing, she’s looking at every guy she’s working with, she’s looking at every guy that works at the local places she visits - the coffee shop, the library, the 24 hour gym - and she thinks that when she sees that guy, that she’ll just know.

That’s how soulmates work right? You’re made for them so clearly when she sees him, she’s got to know.

But it’s been a week, and she’s starting to think that fates just fucking with her, because she’s known everyone in her lab for two years now, and she’s never even remotely given them a second glance, all the baristas are about sixteen and pubescent and her run ins at the gym have just been unfortunate. 

And though she told Kara she was ready to ignore it she was actually thinking about whether or not she should head over to Kara after her run to voice her fear that her soulmate was either fake or dead, and that’s why she’s suddenly seeing yellow.

Or at least that was the plan until she full body collided into the person jogging in front of her, and they took a tumbling dive into the pavement. 

“Hey!”  
  
“What the hell?”

“Oh shit -”

“What -”

Alex finally pulls herself up to a more kneeling position, and ignoring the hiss of the sting in her knee where it collided directly with the cement, brushing a strand of her hair back gives a sheepish smile toward the stranger, and chalks up her sudden rise in a pulse rate, and caught breath to the tumble. 

“Uh, sorry about that.”

“Well, I’m never upset when there’s a pretty girl on top of me, so don’t be.”

The stranger has a too wide smirk, dimples showing, and it throws Alex off so hard that her look of confusion is almost delayed, that it takes a whole breath before her brow knits together, and ten whole seconds to pass before she realizes what the woman below her means. 

“What? Oh my god, I’m sorry - I - Sorry!” Flustered and rushed she pulls herself off of the stranger, and just brushes herself off before offering a hand out to the other and lifts her off the ground as well. 

“Sorry, again, about the collision there, I got really lost and thought and I just -” Alex starts waving around her hands for a second before just clicking her mouth shut, deciding that she’s already made a fool of herself in the last thirty seconds to last the next thirty years, so she might as well stop there. 

“Hey, no, I get it. I just you know - usually get asked my name before I end up on my back.”

Alex, ever so graceful and prepared lets her jaw drop and face flush much faster than she’d ever like to admit, just blinking slowly because she had expected a lot but she had not expected that. 

“I - Um.”

“I’m just messing around, I promise. No more jokes. I know that’s not what you’re playing at. But, if you were wondering. It’s Maggie.”

“Maggie?”

“My name.” Maggie, she knows now, smirks as she quirks a brow, arms crossed, hair just slightly a mess from the tumble, and Alex notes, she’s very pretty. She can’t tell if she’s jealous or just appreciative of it.

“Oh! Uh, Alex Danvers, but um, just Alex,” finally shaking her head to attempt to clear it of the embarrassment and word jumble she seems to be falling further into. “Are you sure you’re alright? I kinda came in running hard, I just wanna make sure?”

“Hey, I’m fine, Danvers. How about you?”

“I’m okay but I feel a bit guilty, are you sure I can’t make it up to you some how? Coffee after this or something?” Alex feels the need to know that the other is fine for sure, and also make up for the horrible first impression she just made. So she gives a bit of a hopeful smile, and it must work because Maggie returns it.

“Yeah, sure, why not?”

Alex grins get a bit bigger and she ducks her head because after the shitty few days she’s had, at least fate could grant her a new friend. That’s fair, she guesses.

“Bet I can beat you to the end of the track.”

“Oh, you wish, Danvers.”

\---

Alex starts to learn a lot about Maggie after that. They start to hang out a lot after that.

Alex learns that she’s a beat cop trying to work her way toward Detective, and working toward her Masters in Criminal Justice. Alex learns that she’s gay and she’s kissed aliens and that she’s from Nebraska. Alex learns a lot about her. 

Alex learns that she has found her soulmate recently, and it’s not her girlfriend, but she’s not going to hold out for someone while she’s trying to build a future with another. She doesn’t ask what color she can see though because she knows that can be personal. 

Alex starts to learn a lot about herself after a bit of a miscommunication between the two as well. 

Earlier in the week Maggie had seemed really low on herself and was later found at the alien bar that had become their little spot for pool games and a good beer when they needed to escape life for a bit.

(Which seemed to be a lot of the time if you took how many times Alex kicked Maggie’s ass at pool.)

Alex’s memory had recalled it almost immediately and vividly because it was still such a bewildering idea. 

“She broke up with you? What? Why?”

“Because I’m too busy with work? I’m dedicated to school? I left our anniversary dinner because they needed someone to cover a shift, so I took it? The borderline sociopath part though? That really dug it in, Danvers.”

“Maggie….you’re not a sociopath, if anything, she’s the insane one for breaking up with you. I mean - you’re, Maggie, you’re beautiful. And uh, amazing, and you’re great at your job so what if you prioritize it, you want a better future for yourself. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“I kept the secret that I had a soulmate and I found them from her.”

“That doesn’t make a sociopath.”

Alex can’t fathom someone saying any of those things to Maggie, in her head anyone would be lucky to date Maggie, and if Maggie was a guy, or by some crazy chance she were gay, she would date Maggie. So fast. If she were gay, she would hope to every God and Alien deity out there, that Maggie was her soulmate, if only she were so lucky.

And For a second, Alex thinks something strange flickers across Maggie’s face, because she gives her an odd look, but it’s gone before she can ask about it, and she’s downing the rest of her beer. 

“As lovely as this little talk has been, Danvers. And I appreciate, I do. I think it’s time that I go home and drink a little something harder and mope for a bit like every other recent breakup participant on a sad Friday night.”

Alex goes to tell her she doesn’t have to spend it alone but before she can even get the words out, there’s cash on the table for M’gann, and she’s already headed toward the door. 

\-------

Jogging next to Maggie had become a frequent thing when they're scheduled

matched up, and it had been a few days since the bar and Alex had hoped they could talk because she had wanted to cheer her up. And Maggie who for three days now had seemed really bummed and while understandably so, however, she agreed to the jog. 

“So, I read about this neat tapas place opening up, and I figured we could go maybe tomorrow night if you wanted?”

“Tapas?”   
“Yeah, I just know you’ve been bummed, and if the two of us went out it might be fun?”

Alex tries to ignore the swoop in her stomach, because normal people don’t get nervous asking their friend places, and she’s just being weird. The little smile that Maggie gives her before she knits her brow together only makes Alex’s butterflies worse though. 

“Did you...wow, I guess I misread that one wrong then. You and me, huh?”  
  
“Uh, yeah? Why? Is something wrong?”  
  
Alex lets out a confused laugh, meanwhile, Maggie gets this bit of a head tilt that if this wasn’t such an odd situation, Alex would tease her seemed almost dog like, just to piss her off.

“I just didn’t peg you as into women, Danvers.”

“I -” Alex stutters and stops mid-jog because she suddenly feels like an elephant on her chest because the last thing she felt would come out of Maggie’s mouth. “Maggie, I’m not gay I was just - I’m not - You’re - it’s fine that you are but I’m -”

“You’re not gay. I get it.” Maggie interrupts, but she starts her jog again. A bit faster even, and it takes a second but Alex catches up.

“Yeah.”

“You’d be surprised how many people say that on a daily basis.”   
“Maggie...”

“Danvers.”

Alex wishes it just dropped off after that, but instead an awkward silence takes them over as they finish off the last few minutes in their jog, and Alex makes up a fake phone call and skips their routine coffee to get out of there as fast as she can. She’s not even sure she said bye.

And that leads her to the current situation. The one where Alex may have just felt her whole world comes crashing down on her. Or at least so she thinks.

She’s been ignoring all point of contact when it comes to Maggie, and she’s called out of work and school today to wallow on her floor. Laying down with a bottle of liquor next to her because if she thinks about this sober anymore, like she has for the last three days she might actually achieve spontaneous combustion. 

It’s been roughly 56 hours since that incident, and Alex has decided it comes down to one or two things. She’s either not the genius she’s been told she is, and actually an idiot and gay, or she’s achieving that college phase of liking girls that many others.

Except, if she’s honest and it seems like she hasn’t been. And she looks back on Vicky, and her soulmate. And how she’s been trying to figure out what to look for in the cursed person that has her seeing yellow, she thinks of Maggie. She thinks of girls, and their softness, and the feelings that Maggie’s been giving her. The feelings that Vicky gave her that she squashed down all those years ago.

And she does what she does best as a scientist. She creates a hypothesis, she collects the data, she experiments. She experiments, by herself, with a computer. With her hand. With less dignity than she’d like to admit to. And some own self-satisfaction.

And she concludes. 

She concludes that she’s probably an idiot.

And blind.

And so very, very gay.

And that if she had looked at girls the past month and a half maybe she would have found the asshole that made her see the horrendous yellow color the college picked in school spirit. She has a bone to pick, because had she known what the coloring on the shirt she’d been wearing was, she’d never worn it in the first place. To bed or not.

\---

She tells Kara first.

Because even though she wants to tell Maggie, she needs someone close to her that feels like solid ground, and Maggie feels like floating.

She feels like reaching for the stars but never quite touching them.

And she knows what feelings are but she thinks that before she can admit to them she needs to talk to Kara, and apparently, the best time to do that is at 2:37 in the morning, on a Tuesday, with donuts from the 24-hour donut shop down the street.

Alex explains it horribly at first, she knows she does because she thinks that Kara hasn’t looked that confused since Alex explained the lawnmower to her when they were just kids.

Until finally she speaks.

“Alex, it sounds like you’re talking about Maggie but...it sounds like you’re coming out to me.”

“I-” Alex doesn’t know how to continue a jumbled ramble any further and she just stops her pacing to give an almost deer in the headlight look. This apparently prompts Kara to lead her to the couch only to interrupt anything Alex has to say.

“And if you were coming out to me, I would be happy for you. And that meant we need to change how we look for your soulmate, or if this means it might make it easier, or if we’re really lucky that means it Maggie, because it really, really sounds like it might be - then it is. And I’m so proud of you.”

Alex feels Kara pull her close, and it’s like a floodgate that just opens because suddenly she’s the one collapsed against her sister, sobs being released that she didn’t even know she was holding in. And for once the roles were reversed, and Alex hadn’t felt guilty about it.

It was only later when Kara suddenly jumped off the couch, almost tossing her off the couch with her, that Alex glares at her. 

“Alex, oh my god! We have to get you that like gay dating app! You know the one for women!”

“What? No I don’t -”   
“Alex!” She squeaks suddenly looking for her Alex’s phone or so Alex can assume as she watches Kara rummage through the coffee table looking for it.

“Wait a minute, Kara how do you even know about that?”

\----

It’s been six days since she’s talked to Maggie past a text that says “it's okay”, and when she does all does is ask Maggie to meet her by the waterfront near the school in another text message.

Surfing, the ocean, and the waves, all those things had always made her feel more at home, and though this wasn’t the beach town she grew up in, it still held that same calming feeling.

Sitting by the water with the sand between her toes, just watching the waves hit the ground as the came in crashing helped ease the anxiety she had about meeting Maggie after so long.

She’s got her eyes closed and is barely paying attention, which is why she jumps when Maggie finally approaches with a, “Hey Danvers.”

“Uh, hey, Sawyer.” Alex is standing up to brush herself of sand as best she can, she doesn’t know how to go about this, or make this any less awkward than it feels but she knows that she missed Maggie, and when she’s with her it’s cliche but things feel right.

“It’s been a hot minute, yeah?”

Alex just swallows but nods as she responds. “Yeah, I’ve been um, doing some things. Thinking, homework, you know stuff like that.”

“Uh huh.” Maggie doesn’t look like she believes her for a second but she turns her gaze to the water instead. Alex notes the way she chews on her lip, and fights the urge to run finger tips over Maggie’s jaw, and the second urge to kiss her. 

It’s another long silence before Maggie speaks again.

“I’m sorry, again, I was out of line and -”

“No, you weren’t.” Alex stops her, but not just because she doesn’t want her to apologize again, but because she wants her to know, that someone needed to say that, that Maggie has...saved Alex’s life in a way that it needed to be saved, and maybe, maybe, ended this search that she’s been having. “You weren’t, um, I think there were - well you were - there was - when you said what you said about….me. I didn’t - you weren’t wrong. It had never occurred to me that, that was even an idea. I’ve spent my whole life worrying about Kara that when it came to dating and soulmates, and life, I figured I had set path, and I needed to stick to it.” 

“Danvers -”

Alex shakes her head, wanting to continue. Wanting to get it out. At least this part for sure. “And I just, I wanted you to know, I don’t want you to be sorry because you helped me. And I’m not used to people doing that for me.” 

She’s pushing a stray strand away from her face, and looking down at the ground, pulse racing and face flushed and fighting the urge to run once again. The urge is almost winning though, because Maggie hasn’t said anything, and she must sound ridiculous. So just as Alex goes to turn on her heel, Maggie clears her throat.

And Alex immediately turns her attention on her.

“When I first moved here, it was the first time I had ever seen the ocean. And I couldn’t see the color of the water, so I didn’t get it, you know? Didn’t get why everyone got excited to see the sky hit the waters, or the water was so blue.” She’s got her arms crossed again, and she’s looking out over the water. “But then, on a random day, I was jogging in a new area. The place we jog, and suddenly I saw it. The blue in the sky. In the flowers, in my uniform. Everywhere.”

Alex’s jaw drops a little because she doesn’t want to interrupt, but fate is cruel and never been kind to Alex, never let her be happy for too long, so there’s no way this is going the way she wants it.

“And I replay that day in my head all the time, trying to think of who could have caught my eye that day, that triggered it. And then, last night I remembered. You with your sister, getting ice cream. Just in the corner of my eye, but you were there.” There’s a chuckle coming out of Maggie’s lips but it sounds sad like this is her breaking point. “And then, I thought, I had pushed you away after this and -”

“You didn’t.” Alex shakes her head, and her voice stays firm even when she feels her whole body tremble. “You didn’t push me away.” 

There’s another silence, and Alex thinks this might be the breaking moment for both of them, so she decides to brave, for once at least. Stepping forward, and carefully resting her hand on Maggie’s arms. 

“Your favorite colors yellow.”

“Yeah.”  
  
“And I see yellow.”

Alex’s smile gets wide, and so does Maggies, even though it looks nervous. 

“Alex, relationships like these, they don’t work. They aren’t - you just realized you’re gay. And I just got out of a shitty relationship and -”

“-And I’m willing to take it slow and try this out, because you’re my soulmate and I’m thinking if anyone’s worth it, it’s you, Sawyer.”

Maggie gives her a skeptical look, even through the smile, but ducks her head anyway. After a few seconds, it prompts Alex to lift her chin up with her finger, and give a smile. Alex feels the urge to kiss Maggie again, but she doesn’t want to ruin something so emotional and fragile. 

So instead she asks.

“Can I kiss you?”

“Only if you buy me coffee after.”

 


End file.
